by Jason Tesar
to smile, but she couldn’t manage it.
“Are you going to be OK?”
Rena nodded slowly.
“You want to hang out?”
Now she smiled. “I wish I could. I have another appointment with Dr. Mallory.”
“Well, come on then. I’ll walk you to the transit station.”
008
Rena’s heart beat fast from exertion. Sweat clung to her skin, but the air was cool and dry. Refreshing. The pine forest towered overhead, blocking out most of the direct sunlight. Her soft, leather boots made little sound against the damp earth. Just quiet, dull thuds in the steady repetition of a brisk hike. All around her, higher pitched sounds echoed through the forest. Some were clear and close. Others muffled. Distant. The trill of birds was almost a constant presence, yet Rena could only see a few of them at a time. The tiny, brown and gray bodies flitted through the branches so quickly it was a wonder they didn’t crash into something. Even when they landed, their heads still moved with a sense of urgency. Pivoting from one position to the next without any discernable movement between.
Rena inhaled a deep breath of the pine-scented air and kept ascending. She’d been following a gurgling stream that meandered back and forth as it came down the mountain. This was her favorite route to the top, because the water gave her something interesting to watch for almost the whole trip. Where it spilled over rocks, it shimmered. Where it landed, bubbles floated to the surface. Where it changed directions, it swirled lazily in wide pools. And that was where the flowers grew. Clustered around its banks. Miniature crowds of rainbow-colored hands. Greeting each other. Reaching out for the sunlight.
The mist that had surrounded her at the lower elevation was gone now. Up ahead, a break in the trees revealed a large patch of blue sky. To her right, a familiar boulder protruded from the soil, jagged and gray. All indications that she was seconds from reaching her destination.
Rena couldn’t contain herself. She ran, pushing until her legs burned. The ground passed by in a blur. The trees opened. All of a sudden, she found herself standing on a wide expanse of bare rock ending at a cliff. Her heart thudded in her chest. Her breathing was ragged. Sky and trees and rolling hills as far as her eyes could see. A gentle breeze blew across the cliff, and Rena closed her eyes, feeling its caress on her damp skin. Long strands of hair swung in front of her face, tickling her nose. She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her mouth.
“And now … you’re back with me,” said a calm voice. It was followed by the sound of snapping fingers.
Rena opened her eyes and saw the ceiling of Dr. Mallory’s office. The white panels and artificial lights were a disappointment after what she’d just witnessed.
Dr. Mallory was sitting nearby in a chair. “How are you feeling?”
Rena sat up on the couch. “Fine.”
“Are you ready to talk about what you saw, or do you need a minute?”
“No, I’m ready.”
“Good.” Dr. Mallory looked down at her notes, hovering in the air above her hand. She had one of those expensive interminals like Officer Dougherty, in addition to the exterminal at her desk. “Tell me about the land.”
Rena tucked her legs underneath her and made herself comfortable. “It rose up in the air. Not straight up, like buildings. More … at an angle, like this,” she demonstrated with her hand.
“Like stairs?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t all at the same angle. And not all the same height. It was … random.”
“You called it mountains. Where did you hear that word?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was someone there with you? Someone else who called it mountains?”
“No. I was alone. I just knew what to call it when I was there.”
“So you were alone this time?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Mallory looked down at her notes again. “When you were young, you mentioned a man.”
“Well, yes. He was nearby, in a house at the bottom of the mountain. But this time I was hiking by myself. So, I guess I wasn’t technically alone.”
The counselor smiled. “Hiking. That’s another word you mentioned during the exercise.”
Rena shrugged. “I don’t know where I heard it, but it makes sense to me when I’m there.”
“What about the trees? How did they appear?”
“There were different kinds. Most of them were narrow and tall. The bark was rough. It almost looked like it was peeling off. Sticky in some places. And the leaves were … I don’t know … like green spikes or something.”
Dr. Mallory nodded. She probably thought Rena was crazy, but she was doing a good job keeping her reactions subtle and vague. “And the other trees?”
“They were shorter and round. More like the ones in the commons.”
“You called it a forest again. The same word you used when you were younger.”
“That’s what it’s called when the trees are close together,” Rena said. “And the smell is so … strong. And sweet. I don’t know. It’s difficult to describe.”
“That’s fine. Why don’t you pick something else.”
Rena smiled as something came instantly to her mind. “The sky. There was no Canopy. It was … open. Like in the Barrens but no fog or rain. It was blue.”
Dr. Mallory’s eyebrows rose.
“And when I got to the top of the mountain, I could see everything. It was the most amazing feeling.”
Dr. Mallory smiled. “I can see it makes you happy.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good,” she added, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I think all of us—no matter what our rating, or what we do for a living, or how old we are—we want to be happy.”
Rena nodded. But it felt like she had just admitted to doing something wrong.
“Now I want you to stand up and come with me over to the window.”
“OK …” Rena agreed, slowly pushing herself up from the couch. She followed Dr. Mallory to the window and stood next to the woman, looking out over the city from the third-story perspective.
“What do you see?”
Rena wondered if it was a trick question. “Esh?”
“Can you describe it?”
Well … it’s ugly, for one thing, Rena thought. But she kept this to herself and tried to go along with the exercise. She needed Dr. Mallory to understand she was applying herself to the treatment. “Um. It’s gray,” she answered, looking up at the Canopy and late afternoon light coming through from the sky beyond. “I see streets. People walking. And buildings … lots of them. It’s … crowded? And flat.”
“Exactly. It’s flat. All the way across the city and even onto the Barrens. As far as anyone has ever ventured, the land is flat.”
Now Rena understood where this conversation was headed.
“We want to be happy,” Dr. Mallory continued. “It’s how our minds work. Being happy is good for us, and our brains want it so badly they’ll try to create happiness if they can’t actually experience it.”
“Delusions,” Rena said.
“That’s right. The visions you see are delusions. And we can know this because there are no such things as mountains or forests in Esh. The only trees that exist are the ones in the commons. And you know as well as I do that trees have to be planted and cultivated in order to grow. We don’t find them just sprouting out of the ground everywhere.”
Rena thought of the dead tree in the Barrens, but she didn’t say anything.
“While you’re inside these delusions, experiencing them, you’re happy. What other things do you feel?”
“Um. I guess I feel … safe. Unafraid. Like I can go anywhere or do anything.”
“Free?”
“Yeah.”
Dr. Mallory nodded. “If that was truly your childhood experience, then how would you have learned to break a man’s knee? Or slash someone’s wrist with a knife?”
“I don’t know. I guess I couldn’t have.”
Dr. Ma
llory put her hand on Rena’s shoulder. “Whatever you experienced as a child was not the happiness you needed. So your brain created what was lacking. The reason I’m asking you these questions is so you’ll see the absurdity for yourself. These experiences seem real, but they couldn’t possibly be. That’s the creative power of the brain.”
“OK.”
“I don’t want you to just agree with me. I want you to know this for yourself.”
“I do,” Rena replied. “It’s just my brain that won’t cooperate.”
Dr. Mallory smiled and gave Rena’s shoulder a squeeze before letting go. “This is a fantastic first step. Over the weekend, I want you to get plenty of rest. And spend some time thinking about what we’ve discussed. I’ll see you again on Monday?”
“Monday,” Rena agreed.
009
The sun had risen enough that the canopyscrapers at the Center were no longer silhouettes. The blurry circle of light, only visible because of the polarizing effect of the Canopy, was paler than the sun in Rena’s visions. Was that because delusions were optimistic by their nature? Did her brain want so badly to see a yellow sun, hanging in a blue sky, that it had created the image with more vibrant colors? If so, how did it know what colors to use? Or what the sky would look like without clouds? The sun without the obscurity? Did it just guess?
Or is the explanation simpler than that? Maybe I’ve seen the sky from somewhere other than—
“Good morning,” said a man, jogging along the paved path where Rena was warming up.
“Good morning,” she replied, watching him recede into the distance.
The path encircled Commons Three, the public greenspace nearest to Rena’s house. It was the appropriate place to exercise. On this